New 2012 Internet Trends Report Highlights Opportunities

The 2012 Internet Trends Report is here, and covers some pretty wide-ranging issues, such as the rapid adoption of mobile Internet usage and “examples of business models that are being re-imagined and re-invented thanks to mobile and social.”

The Asset-Light Generation

Education, publishing, photography, and financing have already been dramatically altered. The market for smartphones and tablets will continue to increase, further speeding along what Meeker calls the “sharing economy.” This means more people will have access to up-to-date information without relying on things like encyclopedias, banks, cameras, etc.

Services like Spotify, ZipCar and Netflix are freeing up time and actual physical space. This means that the lifestyles are changing from a culture of owning physical objects to one of constant, easy access. I guess that means I should stop collecting all these Blu-rays, huh?

Re-Imagination of Data – It’s Still the Wild West

You’ve heard of big data by know, right? Check this out: Meeker says the “amount of global digital information created and shared – from documents to pictures to tweets – grew 9x in five years to nearly 2 zettabytes* in 2011.” 1 zettabyte = 1 trillion gigabytes, by the way.

Meeker elaborates: “If Facebook can create a ‘front-end’ to massive amounts of largely new & personal big data, in spite of huge initial resistance to ‘sharing’ – think what can come to pass with front-ends and connections to most types of data over the next 10 years.”

What Companies Need

Businesses need to correlate the traditional sets of data that they already use with the wealth of publicly available data on the Internet. Your company is used to extracting value and insight from traditional methods, but if you haven’t done so already, it’s time to explore the massive unstructured data set that is the world wide web. That includes social media, but it also means looking at the Internet more comprehensively.